First Box Office Projections For 'Wonder Woman' Are Out — How Do They Compare To The Other DCEU Movies?

DC Film will release their first female-led superhero movie in a decade when Wonder Woman hits cinemas on July 2. Director Patty Jenkins is known for her passionate commitment to the film — Jenkins has literally been pitching Wonder Woman to Warner Bros. since 2004! — so our expectations remain high. Now, within two months of the film's release, we're finally seeing long-range box office forecasts that will predict how Wonder Woman is set to perform.

Here Are The Predictions For 'Wonder Woman'

Box Office Pro are currently predicting a 3-day opening weekend of $83 million in the North American box office and a domestic total of $225 million. This is actually a rather strong performance. For example, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them made $74 million in its opening weekend while Marvel's nearest counterpart, Thor, only earned $65.7 million. What's more, Wonder Woman's budget is believed to be between $100-120 million, meaning it's expected to recoup the film's production costs in almost the first weekend.

Critics are pointing out that this would be the weakest performance in the #DCEU to date, but frankly that's not a fair assessment. After all, the DCEU been focused primarily on the phenomenally-powerful brands of Superman and Batman to date (remember how heavily Batman and the Joker featured in the trailers for Suicide Squad?). In comparison, Wonder Woman is actually an untested quantity when it comes to the box office, so this is the kind of performance that we'd expect to see.

If you really want to go out there with number-crunching, you can actually take Box Office Pro's calculations and make a stab at the film's global performance. Previous instalments in the DCEU have actually performed consistently well in the box office, with an average of 41.6% of their takings coming from the domestic market. Assuming Wonder Woman follows this average, the film's on-track to gross $540 million worldwide. While this may be lower than fans would like, this is still a pretty strong performance for an as-yet-untested brand.

What's Driving These Box Office Predictions?

It's worth noting that Wonder Woman is expected to have some strong competition. Sure, the Amazonian Princess will be released a good distance away from comic-book rivals such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming, but Wonder Woman is still sandwiched between the next Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mummy, missing out on the Memorial Day weekend. What's more, while Twitter sentiment is strong, the overall volume of mentions is a lot lower than it was with previous DC films — especially the strongly-marketed Suicide Squad.

The real worry for Warner Bros. will be that, so far, all of the DCEU films had a significant drop-off in their second weekend. That's typically believed to be linked to poor reviews, so Wonder Woman needs to change that narrative for the better.

All in all, these box office predictions are fairly strong, although they'll undoubtedly leave some DC fans disappointed. My hope is that Wonder Woman's actual performance will be a little better; I'd love the film gross $600 million worldwide, which would be an outright success for an untested brand like this. Given these are only the first predictions, things could change over the coming months. Hopefully then, Box Office Pro will see signs of more interest in #WonderWoman, ensuring that these estimates will increase accordingly.

(Sources: Box Office Pro, ComicBook.com)